


Don't Make Me Leave You

by Tonight_At_Noon



Category: The End of the F'ing World (TV 2017)
Genre: Adventure, F/M, On the Run, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-12
Updated: 2018-01-12
Packaged: 2019-03-03 21:57:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13350342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tonight_At_Noon/pseuds/Tonight_At_Noon
Summary: James comes to Alyssa in the middle of the night after having been on the run.





	Don't Make Me Leave You

**Author's Note:**

> I am putting this on here to start the tag for this wonderful TV show. Enjoy.

_. . .And I think I understand what people mean to each other._

* * *

**I**  didn’t know why I was there. I was only meant to look up where she lived, but my feet carried me here without my head’s permission. The house was larger than I had expected. She came to me that day wearing her dad’s old jacket, and I thought maybe it was because she couldn’t afford another. I understood as I stalked through her back garden, still in the red shirt and too-tight jeans, that I was wrong. She wore it for sentimental value. Looking at the expansive house, she probably had loads of jackets.

Breaking in was easy. There was no alarm. No guard dog. And the back sliding door had been left unlocked. I wondered if she had done it. If Alyssa had been coming down in the middle of the night, when her mum and step-dad had gone to bed, to flip the lock for me in the hopes I would come for her.

I still heard her screams for me.

She wouldn’t stop shouting my name when I ran down the beach, bullets flying past me. One almost got me; I felt its flames as it ran past my cheek, blowing the hair on the right side of my head in different directions. Another nearly got my foot. But I kept going. Sand filling my trainers, I sped along the beach until I could safely duck out of sight.

Her voice was in my head even as I walked up the steps of the house. My eyes skimmed all of the photographs on the walls. None were of her. They were of two small babies. Twins. Her little brother and sister.

No wonder she had asked me to run away with her.

I didn’t know which bedroom was hers. I tried each door, quietly turning the doorknobs and peaking inside. The twins slept in the same room. One side of the room was blue. The other was pink. Just in case the one-year-olds forgot who was the boy and who was the girl.

Her mum and step-dad’s room was cold. I stared at them sleeping on opposite sides of the gigantic bed, their backs to each other. There was no love in the room. No connection. Only money and a sad woman.

It took three more tries before I found Alyssa’s room. She slept at the end of the hall, far away from everyone else.

I had always thought I was alone. Since my mum killed herself, I had convinced myself that I was destined for a life of solitude. And I was fine with that at the time. I decided it would help when I finally matured in my psychopathy and started to kill people.

But then I met Alyssa, and it all changed. I was no longer on my own. I was no longer an unfeeling mass of bones and blood. I was a boy, hoping the girl with the pretty eyes and the freckles would hold my mangled hand.

Since being on the run, I had yet to decide if I was okay with the shift. Suddenly, I was  _feeling_  so much more than I had done in years. I was smiling and crying and my heart was hurting out of more than just sadness. At times, it felt like I had regressed.

But other times, like that moment, when my eyes landed on her sleeping body metres in front of me, I was glad for Alyssa’s influence on my life. I didn’t want to return to the emotionless void from which she had grabbed me. I was okay feeling.

The soft, subdued light from the hallway toilet illuminated her through the crack I had made in the doorway. I exhaled in relief that I had found her again.

Opening the door a little more, I stepped over the threshold and took in the her-ness of the space. There was yellow. Frilly pillows. Lace. Surrounding her bed was a canopy. To me, it looked like a mosquito net. But watching her chest as she breathed atop the blankets, I realised it was there to make her feel like royalty.

She was beautiful in her sleep. I had concluded that before, but having not seen her for a fortnight I felt it necessary to reiterate. Her mouth was parted slightly, and as I approached the bed and sat carefully at the edge, I saw her eyes moving quickly behind their lids.

Her hair had changed back to its original colour. An attempt to forget, I determined. To move away from the trauma.

I wanted to touch her. I wanted to hold her, to kiss her. In the days since we had parted, I had often imagined the feel of her lips. Maybe I could be her Prince Charming and wake her with a kiss. In my head, I flashed back to that night the man tried to hurt her, and I decided against kissing her awake.

Should I have woken her at all? I probably should have left her alone. After all, I was a man on the run. The police were looking for me. I was putting her in danger just by being there.

I needed to talk to her, though. So, I leaned down and whispered in her ear.

“Alyssa,” I said.

She fluttered. Her head rolled away from me, trying to escape the disturbance.

I tried again, louder. “Alyssa.”

Her eyes sprang open and she sat up. Our foreheads banged together as if we were cartoon characters in the middle of a bit. We both hissed in pain.

I rubbed my burning skin, my eyes expanding when Alyssa gasped my name, her arms wrapping around my shoulders. She threaded her fingers in my hair.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, pulling away slightly. Her eyes surveyed my face. “Shit, you look terrible.”

I didn’t respond. I knew I looked like shit. I had managed to halfway bathe in petrol station toilets using paper towels and soap, but I was hungry and tired and fed up with being on my own.

I held her to me, burying my face in her neck. And she held me tighter.

##  *** * ***

**“N** obody believes me,” she said. I was lying with my head in her lap, looking up at her round face. Safe. I felt safe there with her fingers still moving through my hair. I felt protected. “They all think you kidnapped me.”

Good. That was my plan after all.

“It’s all so fucked up,” she breathed. Her bottom lip wobbled. I lifted my good hand up and ran my forefinger across her mouth. She looked down at me, and a tear splashed into my mouth. I tasted salt on my tongue. “I want you to come back,” she said.

“Don’t cry,” I told her, moving my finger up her cheek, tracing where the tear had touched her. “And I don’t know if I can ever come back.”

“Let me come with you.”

She had asked me twice already.

“No,” I said for the third time. “It’s too risky. You need to stay here where it’s safe.”

Another tear fell. This one hit my eyebrow. It rolled past my temple into my hair. “I don’t want to be safe if being safe means not being with you.”

She did not allow me to speak on the matter anymore. She held my face in her hands and bent her body to kiss me.

She tasted like mint toothpaste. The heat of her tongue singed the roof of my mouth, and I sat up, separating us for only a half-second before we collided once again.

“Stay with me tonight,” she asked as our lips tangled. We would never be able to untie the knots we got ourselves into that night. “Please.”

I should have left then. I should have said no and started again on my run. But I had come to understand by that point that I would do anything for her. I had missed her, and I was quickly sinking into her skin, and I was saying yes without thinking. The word dribbled out of my mouth. It collapsed against her, and she smiled, her teeth piercing my bottom lip.

“James,” she said.

 _Alyssa_.


End file.
